WHY DO WE OFFER REMOTE MARKETING

The remote marketing program was developed because we encountered clients that had their marketing programs collapse when their marketing director left. So many small businesses know that marketing is the lifeblood of their business and it is a big and risky step to go to having a full time marking associate. The challenge is… Who trains this person?, tells them what to work on?, decides what is the best use of their time and budget?, what do we do if they need additional services like graphic design and web development? We know that there is a fundamental difference between having a dedicated full-time employee focused on a single program and a team servicing several clients. The tradeoff is often the lack of knowledge, oversight, and resources in a small company that does not already have an established marketing department. We built the Think BIG remote marketing program for the small business that needs dedicated marketing but does not have the infrastructure and resources to hire an employee or are frustrated with the churn in employees and the loss in productivity associated with replacing employees.

WHAT MAKES OUR REMOTE MARKETING UNIQUE

In most remote marketing programs, an individual will serve many different clients. Think BIG built the POD Marketing program to serve the needs of clients that are not ready for full-time dedicated support. This program is about taking your marketing to the next level of having a person that eats, sleeps, and breathes your project and only your project. They are employed by us but they report to you and take marching orders from you; while our team provides all the knowledge, oversight, resources, and support they need to be successful. You have the advantage of being able to hire full time dedicated marketing with the added productivity of that employee being part of a seasoned marketing team.

WHAT WE DO

Think BIG will recruit candidates that fill the needs of the client and work within the budget of the client.

Think BIG will employ the individual with approval of the company and cover the overhead associated with the employee (i.e. management, office suppliers, computers, HR, payroll, workers compensation, etc.).

Think BIG will allocate 100% of the new employee time to client project and employee will take instruction from the client with regards to goals and work under the supervisory support of Think BIG management.

Think BIG will train the employee in every aspect of marketing.

Think BIG will retain the records of the program under the confidentiality policies of the company.

Think BIG management will step in at the departure of the employee to ensure continuity in the program until a suitable replacement can be found and trained.

ADVANTAGES OF REMOTE MARKETING

Costs Less – Companies in larger markets will find that employees in Logan UT will cost considerably less; plus, because of the knowledge base in the firm, you don’t have to pay a premium for seasoned and diversely skilled employees or spend company overhead managing, training, supporting.

Better Training – Smaller businesses who do not have a marketing team don’t have the knowledge to properly train new employees. Think BIG knows what businesses need to succeed and are here to mentor employees with their training centered around the goals of the company.

Broader Knowledge Base – Small businesses are often compelled to hire more experienced, senior candidates hoping to bring in knowledge but rarely will a single employee have the knowledge base or resources of a firm. Think BIG is a small group of specialized experts who have done marketing for thousands of different clients over the years.

Better Organization – Having built and executed marketing plans for thousands of companies, we know how to be efficient and ensure that employees are continually reaching their goals.

Program Continuity – Training new employees is very expensive and every time they leave, there is a loss in the Continuity of the program. Each employee is supported by a team of long term personnel who have the ability to carry forward the knowledge gained from prior efforts.

Access to supportive resources. In the same location as the employee are experts in business, marketing, graphic design, web design, web development, SEO, sales, management, and coding. These resources are available to support the employee either through training (covered by overhead) or through highly reduced service fees.

No HR risks – They are our employee even though they are 100% accountable to you, but don’t feel obligated to keep an employee that is just not working out nor pay for unemployment. How many employees have you kept around years longer than you should have?

NOT covered – Benefits that you wish to extend to the employee such as health, dental, life insurance

WHAT DO YOU DO

You select the candidate to hire from the candidates we recruit.

You will retain ownership of any and all work products related to project.

You set goals and give instruction to the employee and they report back to you.

You pay the salary of the employee plus a 55% overhead to Think BIG over the salary offered to employees in their first year and 40% overhead to Think BIG over the salary offered to employees after the first year (i.e. if employee is offered a salary of 50k/yr, then client will pay Think BIG $77.5k in first year and $70k in future years paid on a monthly basis.

You commit to a 3-Month contract and at least 30 days notice.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

I am a scientist by trade. My first position after completing my PhD was for a biotech company that was developing a new antiviral (treatment for the flu). The company was based in San Francisco and could not justify the cost of having laboratories of their own. They were collaborating with the Institute for Antiviral Research (Logan, UT). Initially the institute was doing the experiments on a per experiment basis, but the company decided they needed a dedicated scientist on the project and greater control over the program because: (1) Experiments were costing several thousand dollars per experiment which forced them to be more narrow in their scope; (2) because the team had other projects going on experiments had to be scheduled out far in advance which slowed progression; (3) Scientific oversight was limited to a fraction of the principal investigator’s time and all work was being done by technicians without supervisory observation.

With me on the project, billing was changed from a per experiment model to cost plus a percent of cost applied to overhead. I was able to take program from one experiment per month to 2 experiments a week testing 20X the conditions in each experiment at a fraction of the cost. It really turned the whole program around.

The company nor I could have replicated this program on our own. The company did not have the facilities, equipment, protocols, or knowledge. I was trained by the staff at the institute, I learned from their people, used their protocols, equipment, and facilities, and as I learned I adapted and refined the protocols they provided to the specific needs of our program. I was very grateful for the training I received from the institute and the friends/connections I developed there and the company was grateful to have a place to have the work done and the leadership the institute provided. Under this setup, we succeeded in taking a program from concept to clinical trial in 2 years and I moved into a permanent position with the company at the completion of the project.

Justin Hoopes – 2008
Think BIG Owner

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Cogimetrics, the software we developed to support amazon retailers, was inspired by the needs of my own retail operations. I designed the architecture of the software but don’t have the coding skills to build it myself. My choices were to hire someone full time to work on development, outsource the work, or use a remote developer. I have had other software developed in the past through outsourcing to India but did not want to use that this time, because it took way too much oversight on my end to tell them in painstaking detail what to do, what to change, etc. It work for simpler project but working on an enterprise level software I did not have the appetite for it, I also did not like the idea of hiring someone full time as a prior biotech company I worked for spent years developing software in house with delays primarily caused by the developers quitting every 12 months because they got a better paying job elsewhere.

I ultimately hired a full time dedicated software developer in a remote software development firm. They were a junior developer so I was only charged $50/hr while a senior developer was $150/hr at this firm. However, the junior developer did the core work with the guidance of senior developers and when advanced work needed to be done (i.e. setting up the servers) senior developers would step in for only a few hours at the higher rate.

The only reason I have a full time dedicated software team now is because this firm eventually stopped allocating time to my project because the developer could be billed to others at $150/hr and my project was slowed down to a crawl. Today, I have to have 3 different developers just to cover the basic skills needed to succeed and still don’t have anyone on staff that is an expert in managing the servers or databases.

Looking retrospectively, I would go back to the original remote development plan as it gave me access to the most diverse skills at the best price. I modeled the development of this program around these personal experiences.

Justin Hoopes – 2015
Think BIG Owner

ABOUT US

Think BIG started in 2008 as a traditional SEO company. In 2018, Think BIG launched their new platform for pod marketing where even more services could be offered to clients and we apply the fundamentals of the sharing economy to make full service marking attainable for every business, whether marketing a small business or bigger. However, POD programs do not adequately address the needs of firms that dedicated full time marketing. The remote marketing program was established to provide firms needing dedicated marketing a way to have full-time marketing without all the costs associated with hiring, training, and managing and marketing team. Our team is lead by, Justin Hoopes; a veteran of e-commerce who has personally run several successful online businesses and has added his wealth of knowledge to the unique experiences of everyone on the team. The philosophy of Think BIG is to be a hive of industry. Busy bees always looking for the best way to help businesses get the maximum return on their investment.